efficiency

Today’s post will be a side post about efficiency. It won’t be about reaction efficiency and yield or some sort of scale up process efficiency. Rather, simple and general task efficiency. I love to be more efficient. How or what can I do to complete tasks more efficiency? I think this is something that everyone should be thinking about when at work especially (and of course when doing chores:))

I don’t think it’s necessary for me to elaborate on why it’s important to complete tasks efficiency, because it’s obvious.

The real question is what people can do to be more efficient. I think that the first step is to think about this question all the time. When performing tasks, simply ask yourself whether there is a better way to do this. A LOT of times, the answer is YES! If you answered YES, you probably have some new method in mind. Before running off to implement this new method, ask again… is this method really the best… Suppose you found the best method, now think about how best to implement this method. When considering the implementation – think about the costs – both monetary and time. For example, you can hire someone to implement something. That may cost a fortune, but it will take minimal time (hopefully -_-). More importantly, think about whether it will help you solve FUTURE problems more easily.

I want to emphasize the latter. A lot of people do things using method A because it’s how it’s always been done. There is an initial learning stage where you would be slower and this makes people move away from improvement. But this temporary backstep is sometimes necessary for the leap forward. People are so fixated on NOW that they lose sight of what lies on beyond that small hill or obstruction.

In my personal experience, I found programming to be one of the most amazing skills to have. I don’t have to be amazingly skilled. Just the basics are enough. Think about having to perform the same tasks over and over and over and … anyhow you get the point. You can write a program to complete the task. When evaluating automation I think there are three important questions to ask:

1.    How quickly can I make it happen?

2.    How much time will I save (total-due to this automation)?

3.    Will I learn something in the process that will make future automation easier?

It’s obvious to see that Q1 and Q2 determine whether the initial investments will be worth it. In general, Q3 is much more difficult to evaluate. In general, my person tendency has been that even if you don’t save much time, give it a shot. The answer to Q3 makes all the difference in the world. Suppose I’m operating at 90% efficiency right now (in the sense of Q1 and Q2 results), but due to this compromise, I can have 10% increased maximum efficiency in the future. This multiplies like compound interest and in several years, your 90% of maximal efficiency will be more than your 100% maximal efficiency if you hadn’t learned all that.

Spend time to learn things always. It might seem to take time and make you less effective, but it pays off at the end…